A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

I listened to an interesting lecture last week on behavioral finance by Mier Statman. He presented an interesting question that really has me thinking.

Behavioral finance is a specialized field that studies how people make human choices when it comes to financial issues. You see, economists have theorized a "rational man" that makes choices based on pure reason, without any real emotion. Most economists use this "rational man" to figure out how the economy works. Unfortunately, for the economists, real people just don't act that way.

The example Mier Statman gave, offhandedly, in his lecture was this: if you were given the choice between $1 million guaranteed or a 50% chance for $3 million, which would you choose?

According to economic theory, "rational man" would calculated the expected value of the two options and pick the larger one. Or, 100% chance of $1 million is less than 50% chance of $3 million (or an expected value of $1.5 million), so you should choose the second option.

Usually, I scoff at such examples because I almost always pick the "rational man" option, and pity the poor mortals who can't aspire to be "rational man." But, in this case, I quickly chose the guaranteed $1 million. "You mean, I'm mortal!" I seemed to think.

Even after thinking about it a bit, I still would chose the guaranteed $1 million. Why? Because $1 million would really make a big difference in my life, and I wouldn't want a 50% chance of ending up with nothing.

After thinking about it a bit, I realized that the scale of the reward madea big difference for me. Give me the same bet on a 100% chance of $100 or a 50% chance of $300, and I'd happily take the 50% chance at $300. Same goes for 100% chance of $1,000 versus a 50% of $3,000. For me, I'd still rather a 50% chance at $30,000 over a 100% at $10,000. Around $100,000 is where I start to waffle, though.

I think I'd take the guaranteed $100,000 over a 50% chance at $300,000. Why? Because, once again, $100,000 would make a big difference in my life right now, and I'd much rather have a bird in the hand ($100,000) than 2 in the bush (a 50% chance of $300,000).

Where's your break point? $30, $300, $3,000, $30,000, $300,000, $3,000,000? At what point would you chose the guaranteed 1 over the 50% 3?

Nothing in this blog should be considered investment, financial, tax, or legal advice. The opinions, estimates and projections contained herein are subject to change without notice. Information throughout this blog has been obtained from sources believed to be accurate and reliable, but such accuracy cannot be guaranteed.